Catching my balance.

Travel

24 November 2011

So I haven't been around these parts for a while.... the last couple of months have been a bit like this:

Nothing too earth shattering, mind you, just constant. Highlights?

New professional responsibilities-- some super interesting ones, but new always = extra time, right?

I have now learned what IRB is. FEEL MY PAIN.

An opera! We went to see Aida. I've always wanted to see Aida. I probably should not have made Richmond my first Aida experience. I should have realized from the last time, but hope springs eternal in the human breast. This time around, no ninjas. Yeay! Singing okay, but.... it was a bit like watching an opera-Menudo video mashup. Or, actually, it was kind of like watching the cast of Aida get lost on The Reflex set.

Got to go on a work trip to Chicago that involved visiting lots of museums-- exicting!

Went to see Wicked. Which was a much better production than Aida. The woman who played Glinda was HI-larious.

Took on extra projects that all have deadlines in the middle of all the other deadlines. Sigh.

Basically, in the last few months I haven't had a single day where I didn't have to work on something for someone that was due immediately. It's Thanksgiving, and I have five looming deadlines of things that need to be done by Sunday morning, plus pies to bake. (Also, as a sidenote, I had an epic journey trying to get a Tofurky. Not because, as I would have expected, it is not a product carried by the grocers of, ahem, Richmond, but because every. single. place. sold. out. I'm not kidding. Even Whole Foods. I did, finally, find the one place that hadn't-- yeay Trader Joe's! Not that you should get any ideas here-- on this journey Richmond went ahead and performed true to character in the form of two redneck-hiphop styled teenaged boys who were filling out job applications at one of the grocery stores. After explaining to the customer service folks what Tofurkey was one of them looked up and said, "I could kill you a turkey." Which was, you know, 1000000% the opposite of what I was looking for. And he was not being ironic. Five minutes later he asked the customer service person how to spell Charlottsville. Which is apparently something important to his personal history-- you know, his residence is there, or he worked there-- as it was something he needed to put on a job application. Please file under: Not Impress Potential Employers, How To). At one point I hadn't spent more than 18 hours in Richmond, but had been to the airport three times. The upside of this is that we have finally figured out how to use the unmarked secret airport exit that will send us to the road headed toward our house and not the opposite side of town. The downside of it is that, you know, who wants to be at the airport that much?

Here is how hairy it has been:

Why yes, those are my glasses. Not the ones I usually wear, mind you. Those, well, those I broke twice in the last two years and Phil super glued them together. But in September things got so wild that I lost them. LOST THEM. I've never lost a pair of glasses. So I went to the back up pair. Which, within a couple of weeks, had split down the middle. Which left me with the back up back up pair, which sit crookedly on my face and slide down to the end of my nose so that I'm constantly poking myself in the face to push them back into place. It took me two months to get to the eye doctor to get a new prescription. His office is literally around the corner from my house. And? He's open on Saturdays.

So, yeah. Busy. Need to go make pie. And get back to these deadlines. Wish me reprieve! And how is everyone I haven't been able to talk to since the summer?

07 August 2011

It's been a busy summer. No, really. Busy. Stupid busy. So we went on a road trip.

To Florida! First night plan: camping in Georgia, right on the Florida border. Plan scrapped when the skies opened up. Instead, we watched a giant puddle swallow cars from the safety of the Days Inn lobby in Stark, Florida.

Success! Followed by a couple of days with my dear friend, Fran, with whom I have numerous wacky college memories involving a fair amount of Brooklyn hijinx and terrorizing Ireland. Sorry about that, Ireland.

After a scoot through the Everglades, we headed south. All the way south.

Camping in the Keys. I enjoyed it, though it would have been better if a) we'd had a spot on the beach side of the little road where there would have been a nice breeze. Cause it was pretty hot. And, b) the people next to us had SHUT UP. It is the danger of car camping, of course, that there are going to be people there. Other people, in the spot next to you, which is only fifteen feet away from where you're trying to sleep. And it is a danger of which I am well aware. And yet, I convince myself it will be better this time. Which, of course, it isn't. In the Keys our neighbor told camping stories well into the night. They all started, "This one time, we went camping...." Really. At one point, Phil rolled over toward me and said, "this one time, we went camping, in the Florida Keys, and the asshat in the spot next to us WOULDN'T SHUT UP." It didn't help.

They Keys are purdy purdy, I must say. Wish we'd been able to stay longer.

Then we drove home. The rest of Florida kind of blends in together. We stopped for a dip briefly at the beach in St. Augustine. We spent a night in Palm Beach. We contemplated camping at the Georgia camp site that had been rained out on the way in, but when we got to the exit for it, it was raining. Again. So instead, we stopped in Savannah. Lots of people have told me how nice Savannah is. And the historic part is awfully pretty. But, it became quickly apparent that everyone had failed to mention that the historic part is surrounded by many blocks of serious urban blight. It was a bit of a shock.

We stopped at a wacky flea market on the way out of town, browsed and browsed. Mr. P picked up a couple of neat things, we saw other neat things we couldn't afford, and then we skidaddled on out and headed home to the Mr. Tibbs welcoming committee.

And then there were so many emails in my box it has taken me a week to get through them. Sigh.

22 June 2011

Plane travel has become such a monumental hassle that I try to avoid it at all costs, only giving in to it when absolutely necessary. Funerals fall under that category, so this week involved plane travel. I was reminded of why I try to avoid it when I got a computerized voicemail telling me that my flight had been canceled. No explanation, just canceled. The recording had my confirmation number, full of easily mistakable letters (wait, is that a V? Maybe a B? Did he say F or S?) that no amount of re-listening to could clarify. Continental's lines were busy and I sat on hold for twenty minutes after fiiiiinally getting through their stupid computerized system (no, I didn't say "upgrade" I said REPRESENTATIVE) which seems specifically designed to Piss. You. Off. When I finally got the representative she was huffy and sighed often, making me repeat the confirmation number not once, not twice, but TWELVE TIMES. I explained that I had had a hard time understanding it because I only had it from the computerized voicemail. She sighed loudly, "Repeat that again." I repeated again. And again. And again. She then admonished me, "you know, it's really hard to understand that number over the phone. Repeat it again." When I told her that YES I WAS AWARE OF THE DIFFICULTIES IN UNDERSTANDING IT, YOU SHOULD TRY GETTING IT ONLY FROM A STUPID COMPUTER, she hung up on me. I got to call back and once again do battle with the ridiculous computerized answering service (no, I still don't want a frigging upgrade!) and another twenty minutes on hold.

Meanwhile, my mother is checking the website for information, and it still shows my flight leaving in two hours. She calls Travelocity, sits on hold for a long time, and when they finally answer (before Continental fiiiiiinally does), they tell me that the flight hasn't changed-- it's still leaving in ninety minutes. On the upside, he gives me my confirmation number, complete with clarifiers (B as in Bravo, V as in Victor). We figure we better skeedaddle to the airport. Just to be sure I wait on hold with Continental, riding along in the car and listening to them tell me over and over that they are merging with United. (Ineptitude Squared!!1!!!! Awesome!!!1!!!!!) When, halfway to the airport, someone finally comes on I find out that my flight has, indeed, been canceled. Still no explanation. After much negotiation, I am finally rebooked on a different set of flights.

Waiting for my new, later flight, I am sitting next to an older fellah on the phone with his son back in Oregon. He says, "oh I have to tell you. I went through the security here, and you know, I have no butt, so I always get a bit worried when you have to give up your belt, but I always have a free hand, you know, so it hasn't been a problem. But I give up my belt and they make me go through the xray machine and, well, they make you put your hands up in the air to take that picture, and you know, I have no butt so my pants just dropped down to my knees! The lady just looked away, so that was good, but, hehehehe, there ya go!" He then made several more phone calls, all of them business related, all focused on sales orders and stuff, but it was hard to now associate him with anything other than dropping trou in the security line.

During my layover in Newark I discovered that the "silent" setting on my phone is not silent when I attempted to serreptitiously snap a picture of an outfit that was giving me a bit of a panic attack. It made the camera shutter noise REALLY LOUDLY. Thanks, camera phone. Checking in the camera settings later I discovered that there is no silent mode for the camera. WHAT THE HELL? But yes, those are multi-colored, tie-dyed leggings. What you can't see are the dark red & blue diagonal split toe nails or the t-shirt with the metal studs that outlined a calendar-like picture of a trio of fluffy kittens. Or that she was somewhere on the far side of 60.

The woman with the scary pants got on a flight to Toronto. I was subsequently surrounded by people going to Richmond. In particular, a gaggle of women who had all gone on some trip together that seemed focused on shopping. They spent the next hour complianing about how "these people" are "so rude." It was unclear to me what they meant by "these people." The most charitable description, in the context of the things they were saying, is that they were referring to New Yorkers. It was quite clear, however, that their prejudices may run deeper than regional issues. I wished very badly to get on a plane going back to Boston.

And Richmond struck again, proving itself, once more, to be a place where I just shouldn't expect stuff to be done right. Clear signage at the airport? Only if you want to get on 64. If you want to get back on 895, you best already know how. Because what I really wanted was to be forced to take a long, backtracking detour.

14 January 2011

How cool? So cool that, while on the cruise to the Caribbean for their anniversary that confirmed that they are not, as they suspected, cruise people (it was, as they told us, the fact that most of the people on the cruise appeared to be groups of extremely overweight people from Alabama who conducted bible study sessions on the lilo deck between visits to the buffet that gave it away), during an unplanned three hour visit to Mexico (they were meant to go to the Florida Keys, but weather closed the port), they got Mr. P this gift:

I'm weighting it to flatten for framing (it was rolled up). And yes, that is a vintage movie poster for a Mexican film about Luchadoros fighting zombies. And it is AWESOME.

21 November 2010

Holidays are supposed to be fun and whatnot, but mostly I think they're pretty stressful much of the time. Traveling when everyone else is traveling, maybe hosting, maybe just trying to get somewhere. Christmas coming, which means trying to figure out what to get people, when to have the time to get it, and how to pay for it all. Ug.

Usually I refuse to go anywhere at Thanksgiving. One year I sat in an airport for most of the holiday and had an epiphany that it was seriously not fun and puts one into much too close proximity with pretty much all of one's fellow Americans (a group perhaps better enjoyed at a distance, or at least not cramped into the same plane) to go anywhere for Thanksgiving, and that the reward-- a much too short period of time spent with the family while they were all either watching football or cooking-- was not reward enough for the horror that is Dulles on the Wednesday before the National Day of Stuffing One's Self. Since then I've hosted Thanksgiving Weekend feasts for groups large and small, but have refused go further afield than the grocery store for something I forgot.

This year we are traveling. The upside is that we will not be flying anywhere, and as far as I know we will not be driving on I-95 at any point, both mercies I will take gladly. The downside is that we are traveling. The down downside is that it will not be the first traveling of what is already going to be a hectic week: project deadlines that fall tomorrow for two large projects, and so must be completed today or else, followed by traveling to two different locations Monday and Tuesday for work that will involve quite a bit of driving and some quality time at the Holiday Inn, work on Wednesday, and then down to North Carolina for the festivities. Somewhere in there I need to bake some more pumpkin bread, as I've decided that is probably the only thing that will travel well. Also, as someone who doesn't eat meat, my suspicion is that the pumpkin bread I bring may be the only thing at a Southern Thanksgiving meal that doesn't involve an animal.

So someone will stuff the bird, I'm sure, everyone will stuff their bellies, but it looks like most of my stuffing has been done to my schedule. I keep hoping that my fairy godmother is going to come down and grant me a wish-- a vacation, maybe?-- but that dang bimbo seems to have lost my address.

21 October 2010

So busy lately. Lots and lots going on to the point where this week, twice, I was totally confused about what month it was.

Being so busy I still haven't had a chance to go through the pictures from the road trip that Mr. P and I made this summer. In, uhm, July. Which, if I do now have my months straightened out, was now three and a half months ago. Of course, I've also got two rolls of film from I'm not sure where in my purse that need to be dropped off and have been in there for two weeks, so there you go.

Still, I keep planing to do nanowrimo again this year. Which may be just stupid, but I've enjoyed doing it that last four years. Besides, I have a novel idea that I've been mulling for months.... Or, at least, I think it's been months. Depending on when now is.

15 September 2010

So. Recently I embarked on a journey outside of my comfort zone. A potentially long journey outside of my comfort zone. And when I say outside of my comfort zone, I mean more like a multi-year space journey to another galaxy.

We all have spaces that are familiar and comforting and put us at ease and are not at all like everyone else's space, or even most people's space, yes? Mine has involved the Humanities (for obviously overeducated reasons), art (especially certain kinds of art), and Asia (particularly certain parts of Asia). I was recently talking with someone at work about Vietnam, someone older than me and male, who asked me what for some reason men especially ask me-- weren't you scared traveling around alone?

Not really. I worried about motorcycle accidents, since they were pretty common, but he was referring more to traveling alone, in a foreign country (and perhaps doing so as a woman). But traveling alone never bothered me, and traveling alone as a woman didn't bother me there or any of the places I've traveled (even when I was stuck spending the night in a brothel because it was the only "hotel" in town). But I could see how it might be worrisome in some places.

Because, through the choices I've made that led to this or that experience, that is all within the boundaries of my comfort zone. What is not in the boundaries of my comfort zone is this:

Not the reading of it (which I can do fine). The making of it.

The making of both of these things. Which I did this week. This is well out of my field of experience. On the one hand, I've discovered that I can actually make these things. On the other of the hands, this is the first stop on my intergalactic journey and is probably a neighboring solar system. So wish me bon chance, people, cause'n I'm gonna need it.

14 August 2010

I've been thinking a lot about painting lately. I used to paint all the time, back when I was busy being a starving artist in New York. But then I decided I was going to be an intellectual instead of a starving artist and ran off to grad school, which too all of my time and I haven't really painted since. I kept telling myself that I would get back to it after grad school, but then I finished and found that the list of things that I wanted to get back to, that I'd deprived myself of for eight and half years, was very long. I'm still working my way through it... things like reading novels again and writing short stories, crafty things, photography.... I haven't quite gotten back to painting (or to making films, for that matter). But lately I've been thinking about it more and more, in my waking and my dreaming lives.

In my dreaming life I have been painting landscapes. Lots and lots of landscapes. Which is strange-- I painted a few cityscapes in NYC, but I have never, ever been a landscape painter. Or been much for landscapes in photography either, for that matter. But in my dreams I paint landscapes. And this year on our cross country trip I found myself making kind of painterly landscape photographs, too.

04 August 2010

Oh, I know. You're looking at this and thinking... what am I looking at? A short story. Two short stories. Short story number one: Mr. P and I spent some time on our trip tooling through North Dakota. Mr. P of the eagle eye spotted an abandoned homestead, my very heart's desire. We drove off the main drive down a side road and down a dirt driveway and found an abandoned house with two collapsed outbuildings. I was poking around the house when Mr. P told me to come to one of the outbuildings. Looks like it might have been a garage or something. The attic was now on the ground at a jaunty angle. He pointed inside.

"If you look in there you can see a spine."

So I took a picture. If you look inside you can see a spine. Mr. P investigated. His assessment: deer spine.

Story number two? The short story I'm going to write where I imagine that is isn't a deer spine.

01 August 2010

We did a lot of camping on our trip... more than I remembered to take pictures of, but not nearly as much as I would like. Wish we had the time to do more.

Happy the tent held up (I couldn't find the good tent so we ended up in a cheapie Target special), happy it kept the rain off us in North Dakota and kept in enough heat (I couldn't find the good sleeping bags either) in the Badlands and the Redwoods, and even happier that we had a night in the Mojave without the rain fly. The star gazing while the coyotes howled was awesome. And we survived despite being, as Mr. P said numerous times, the two stooges. (Did I mention that I couldn't find the flashlight either? Yeah. We did a cross country camping trip without actually having any appropriate equipment. Mr. P described as car camping like we're roughing it).